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A historical reconstruction of the holistic approach to cancer is presented. A particular attention is given to the United States, since, after reductionism had prevailed in Western world, New York Jungian psychoanalyst Elida Evans published the first modern monograph about the psychology of cancer patients in 1926, proposing a holistic view of cancer again. Evans' theory has largely influenced cancer psychosomatics. Without pretension of completeness, research on cancer is discussed in its epidemiological, social, environmental, behavioural, and psychoanalytical aspects. The results of psychoneuroimmunology and the discoveries of developmental psychobiology are highlighted for their importance in a holistic vision of cancer. Assumption of this paper is that persistent dualism -studying body or mind -is depriving research of fundamental variables involved in human cancer; therefore, integrated multidisciplinary investigation is advocated.

This paper shows that Georg Groddeck and Carl Gustav Jung shared a common cultural background, in which Carl Gustav Carus’s theory of the psyche was preeminent. Accordingly, they emphasized symbolization and unconscious creativity. These aspects affected their clinical work, aimed at pioneering therapies: Jung with schizophrenics, Groddeck treating physical diseases. They overcame the limits of the psychoanalysis of their time and, going beyond neurosis, discovered the pre-Oedipal period and the fundamental role of mother-child relationship. While Freud’s technique was based on a one-person paradigm, both Jung and Groddeck considered analytic therapy as a dialectical process, ushering in a two-person paradigm. Therefore, they did not use the couch; a setting that is assessed in the light of recent research on mirror neurons. It is also highlighted that the analytic groups influenced by Groddeck and Jung have developed similar ideas in both theory and technique; a fact that may induce further studies on the history of depth psychology.

The philosophy of nature as Jung's background has been overlooked, despite its relevance for understanding the roots of analytical psychology. The German psychoanalyst Georg Groddeck shared such a background, so that a comparison is possible between his clinical view and Jung's. It is shown that natural philosophers Paracelsus, Johann von Goethe and Carl Gustav Carus had a major impact on Jung and Groddeck. Both of the latter followed Carus's theory of a creative, superindividual, and compensatory unconscious – continuing the Naturphilosophie tradition and rejecting reductionist biophysical medicine. Groddeck and Jung's holistic perspective led them to advocate natural healing, face‐to‐face dialectical analysis, and the uniqueness of each treatment. Thus, they were against using techniques, and instead established general methods for analytic therapy. Groddeck's thinking was closer to Jung's than to Freud's in both theory and practice. Therefore, two alternative strands should be considered within psychoanalysis: Freud's classical drive theory and Groddeck's underground two‐person psychology. Thereby, Jung's analytic descendants and the relational psychoanalysts who stemmed from Groddeck's ideas could be regarded as ‘cousins’ due to the similarities arising from their common origin in the philosophy of nature.

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